“A parade of mayors, Democrat and Republican, have also predominantly relied on the private sector over the past 40 years to address the city’s lack of affordable housing. Yet here we are, after spending billions of public dollars, arguably mired in a worsening crisis.”

Adi Talwar

East Village buildings that are a part of the Cooper Square Community Land Trust.

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Congressman Dan Goldman recently sent an email announcing his support for State Sen. Zellnor Myrie’s mayoral bid. One of the main reasons cited for this endorsement is Myrie’s plan to tackle the city’s housing crisis, which, the Congressman wrote, “leverages the private sector to jumpstart a housing boom.”

A note to Rep. Goldman: a parade of mayors, Democrat and Republican, have also predominantly relied on the private sector over the past 40 years to address the city’s lack of affordable housing. Yet here we are, after spending billions of public dollars, arguably mired in a worsening crisis. Maybe it’s time for a different approach?

In January 1985, as unhoused families spilled onto the streets of the city and into newspaper headlines, Mayor Edward Koch launched a five-year, $4 billion plan to build and renovate 100,000 apartments, a proposal that soon grew to 10 years, $5 billion and 150,000 apartments. The Koch plan was a major departure in municipal policy: For decades, the construction of apartments for lower income individuals and families was largely financed by the federal government. That came to an abrupt halt under the Reagan administration. 

With large swaths of the city’s housing decimated in the wake of the 1970s fiscal crisis and a wave of arson and landlord abandonment, Koch’s commitment of public funds was much needed. But the city’s resources, compared with the need, were relatively limited, so the plan relied heavily on for-profit housing developers.

The Koch plan became the template for ensuing mayors, though the Dinkins administration’s ambitions faced deep constraints from the recession of the early 1990s and the Giuliani administration was more concerned with villainizing low-income New Yorkers than building housing for them. Then came Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who launched his own ambitious New Housing Marketplace Plan—eventually growing to a $7.5 billion, 10-year initiative to create and preserve 165,000 units. As the Urban Land Institute noted in its 2012 award to the Bloomberg administration for the plan, one of its principal components was “harnessing the private market to create affordable and workforce housing.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio took an even bigger swing at the city’s shortfall in affordable housing, introducing a 10-year plan to create and preserve 200,000 apartments, later upping the ante to 12 years, 300,000 units at a cost of $16.9 billion. Despite his portrayal in the city’s tabloid press as a staunch leftist, de Blasio’s plan also largely depended upon for-profit housing developers.

Over the years 2014-2018, for-profit developers built nearly 80 percent of the newly constructed apartments under the de Blasio administration’s housing plan, according to a Community Service Society* report. A relatively small share of those apartments, just 18 percent, were affordable to the lowest income New Yorkers. Conversely, nonprofit developers created nearly double that share of apartments affordable to households with extremely low incomes—suggesting, not surprisingly, that the demand for profits has a direct effect on affordability levels.

Mayor Eric Adams, who once declared “I am real estate,” has basically pursued the contours of the remaining years of de Blasio’s plan while pushing the City of Yes initiative to make it easier to construct higher density buildings in more of the city. Adams also recently created a charter revision panel with the ostensible goal of finding ways to streamline the approval process for housing development. Prior mayors also made rezoning city neighborhoods and streamlining construction reviews part of their housing efforts, but didn’t empanel a charter commission to do it—leading some observers to question whether Adams’ real intent is to undercut the City Council’s own charter commission.

Despite all these initiatives over the past four decades, the city’s lack of affordable housing has seemingly worsened. On a recent February night, more than 85,000 people, including more than 35,000 children, spent the night in a city homeless shelter. As David Brand wrote last year on Gothamist, the vacancy rate for apartments in New York City was a miniscule 1.4 percent, the lowest in 50 years, and less than 1 percent for apartments renting for under $2,400. Among city households with incomes less than $25,000 (about 690,000 households in 2023, according to Statista) 86 percent were severely rent burdened, meaning rent swallowed at least half their income.

Such facts have led many housing advocates, along with some elected officials, to say it’s time to reorient the city’s approach and place a greater emphasis on social housing. Social housing is generally defined as housing that’s operated outside the profit-driven real estate market so it’s permanently affordable and controlled by community groups, building residents, or an entity like the city’s public housing authority.

It’s been part of the city’s terrain for decades. Public housing is largely a federal effort, and cutbacks in Washington have for years strained the finances of the 335 developments under the purview of the New York City Housing Authority. A recent CSS report noted that two of the city’s principal social housing programs, Neighborhood Pillars and Open Door, are thinly financed, a combined $70 million in the adopted budget for this year—not even a rounding error in the city’s capital plan.

Social housing proponents have championed bills in Albany and at City Hall that would help tilt efforts towards more community and resident driven housing. Earlier this month some 70 advocacy groups rallied in Albany for the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, which would give tenants the first right to purchase a building when the owner puts it up for sale.

Proponents are also calling for the state budget to include $250 million to help tenants make purchases. “The Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act would protect us from the churn of our profit-driven housing market, creating stable, resident-controlled social housing across our state,” said Cea Weaver of Housing Justice for All in a press release.

Myrie, who has shunned real estate industry donations in past campaigns but not for his mayoral run, is the prime sponsor of the bill in the State Senate but makes scant mention of it in his campaign’s 24-page housing plan.

On the city level, the Community Land Act would give nonprofit groups and community land trusts the first right to purchase a building when the owner puts it up for sale. Another component of the act would require the city to prioritize land trusts and other nonprofits when selling public land.

More than 100 community groups, from the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development to the New Economy Project to the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, have endorsed the provisions of the land act, which has stalled in the City Council, facing opposition from Mayor Adams and developers.

It would be wrong to dismiss the efforts of the past 40 years. Thousands of apartments were created or preserved at varying levels of affordability (though sometimes at extraordinary cost) and large swaths of devastated neighborhoods were redeveloped, such as in Mt. Eden in the South Bronx by New Settlement Apartments and Harlem under the Bradhurst Plan. But clearly these efforts weren’t sufficient.

Nor would passing the tenant purchasing and community land acts solve the city’s housing crisis. But they would begin to alter the playing field, tilting public policy—and public perception—towards an approach that underscores housing as a home rather than a commodity from which to maximize profits. A very different kind of calculus than we hear coming out of much of government these days.

Doug Turetsky, a former City Limits reporter and editor, was most recently chief of staff and communications director at the New York City Independent Budget Office.

*Community Service Society is among City Limits’ funders.

FORT MYERS, Fla. — Ty France spent this offseason simplifying things in the batter’s box, getting back to his roots. He seems encouraged by the early results that he’s seeing.

Both France and Harrison Bader, whom the Twins signed to one year-deals earlier this month, hit home runs on Tuesday in the Twins’ 5-4 win over the New York Yankees at Hammond Stadium.

France is trying to rebound after a tough 2024 season at the plate in which his power and production were down. The veteran signed a one-year, non-guaranteed deal with the Twins and figures to factor heavily into their first base plans.

“I feel like my old self, just moving the ball all around the field,” France said. “When I’m hitting the ball the other way, usually I’m pretty dialed in. So far, camp has been good. I’m going to try to keep it rolling.”

The infielder got ahold of a Carlos Carrasco first-pitch sinker in the second inning and took it out to right field, tying the game at the time. The very next inning, Bader hit his first of the spring, as well, sending a slider out past the left-field fence.

Bader hit .273 with a .733 OPS in the first half of last season with the New York Mets but his numbers tailed off in the second half. He agreed to a one-year deal with a mutual option this month and will back up Byron Buxton in center and play some corner outfield, as well.

“Those guys have fallen in with the group very well. We’re going to run them out there, get them a bunch of at-bats,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “The more at-bats you get, the more comfortable you get in spring, and I think both of them want the at-bats, too. So, we’ll give them to them. The early returns in these spring training games, they’re good.”

Ramírez fights for 10 years

Fewer than 10 percent of players who have ever slipped on a major league uniform have reached a decade of service time. That lofty number is in Erasmo Ramírez’s sights — it’s just taking a bit longer than the pitcher would liked.  He currently sits at nine years, three days of service time.

“It’s just moving slowly, too slow,” Ramirez said with a laugh. “I wish it moved a little faster, but it’s just life. I cannot change what I did in the past, but I can work on my present. Hopefully I have a better future.”

And he hopes that future is with the Twins. Ramírez signed a minor league deal with an invite to spring training after spending last year with the Rays. The 34-year-old pitched in 13 games last year, posting a 4.35 earned-run average.

He’s pitched for six different MLB teams across 13 seasons but is likely to begin the season at Triple-A St. Paul, waiting for an opportunity. The best thing for him to do now, he said, is wait for and earn his chance.

“I’ve never been a hard-thrower,” he said. “I depend on my command. My command is big. I know I can compete. As of right now, I just want to be able to compete and after that, when the speed shows up, good luck to the hitters.”

Briefly

The Twins will make the journey north to Lakeland on Tuesday to face the Detroit Tigers. Andrew Morris, one of the organization’s top pitching prospects, is slated to start the game against reigning American League Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal. … When Matt Canterino took the mound on Tuesday in the seventh inning, it had been more than 900 days since his last appearance in regular season game (he pitched in spring training games last spring) due to injuries. It may not have been how he would’ve scripted it — he walked three batters — but he came away with a scoreless frame. … Outfielder DaShawn Kiersey Jr. delivered a walk-off hit on Tuesday to lift the Twins to their second victory of the spring.

By ISABEL DEBRE

SALFIT, West Bank (AP) — Order a Coke to wash down some hummus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank these days and chances are the waiter will shake his head disapprovingly — or worse, mutter “shame, shame” in Arabic — before suggesting the popular local alternative: a can of Chat Cola.

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Chat Cola — its red tin and sweeping white script bearing remarkable resemblance to the iconic American soft drink’s logo — has seen its products explode in popularity across the occupied West Bank in the past year as Palestinian consumers, angry at America’s steadfast support for Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza, protest with their pocketbooks.

“No one wants to be caught drinking Coke,” said Mad Asaad, 21, a worker at the bakery-cafe chain Croissant House in the West Bank city of Ramallah, which stopped selling Coke after the war erupted. “Everyone drinks Chat now. It’s sending a message.”

Since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack triggered Israel’s devastating military campaign in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian-led boycott movement against companies perceived as supportive of Israel gained momentum across the Middle East, where the usual American corporate targets like McDonald’s, KFC and Starbucks saw sales slide last year.

Here in the West Bank, the boycott has shuttered two KFC branches in Ramallah. But the most noticeable expression of consumer outrage has been the sudden ubiquity of Chat Cola as shopkeepers relegate Coke cans to the bottom shelf — or pull them altogether.

“When people started to boycott, they became aware that Chat existed,” Fahed Arar, general manager of Chat Cola, told The Associated Press from the giant red-painted factory, nestled in the hilly West Bank town of Salfit. “I’m proud to have created a product that matches that of a global company.”

With the “buy local” movement burgeoning during the war, Chat Cola said its sales in the West Bank surged more than 40% last year, compared to 2023.

While the companies said they had no available statistics on their command of the local market due to the difficulties of data collection in wartime, anecdotal evidence suggests Chat Cola is clawing at some of Coca-Cola’s market share.

“Chat used to be a specialty product, but from what we’ve seen, it dominates the market,” said Abdulqader Azeez Hassan, 25, the owner of a supermarket in Salfit that boasts fridges full of the fizzy drinks.

But workers at Coca-Cola’s franchise in the West Bank, the National Beverage Company, are all Palestinian, and a boycott affects them, too, said its general manager, Imad Hindi.

He declined to elaborate on the business impact of the boycott, suggesting it can’t be untangled from the effects of the West Bank’s economic free-fall and intensified Israeli security controls that have multiplied shipping times and costs for Palestinian companies during the war.

The Coca-Cola Company did not respond to a request for comment.

Whether or not the movement brings lasting consequences, it does reflect an upsurge of political consciousness, said Salah Hussein, head of the Ramallah Chamber of Commerce.

“It’s the first time we’ve ever seen a boycott to this extent,” Hussein said, noting how institutions like the prominent Birzeit University near Ramallah canceled their Coke orders. “After Oct. 7, everything changed. And after Trump, everything will continue to change.”

President Donald Trump’s call for the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, which he rephrased last week as a recommendation, has further inflamed anti-American sentiment around the region.

With orders pouring in not only from Lebanon and Yemen but also the United States and Europe, the company has its sights set on the international market, said PR manager Ahmad Hammad.

Hired to help Chat Cola cash in on combustible emotions created by the war, Hammad has rebranded what began in 2019 as a niche mom-and-pop operation.

“We had to take advantage of the opportunity,” he said of the company’s new “Palestinian taste” logo and national flag-hued merchandise.

In its scramble to satisfy demand, Chat Cola is opening a second production site in neighboring Jordan. It rolled out new candy-colored flavors, like blueberry, strawberry and green apple.

At the steamy plant in Salfit, recent college graduates in lab coats said that they took pains to produce a carbonated beverage that could sell on its taste, not just a customer’s sense of solidarity with the Palestinians.

“Quality has been a problem with local Palestinian products before,” said Hanna al-Ahmad, 32, the head of quality control for Chat Cola, shouting to be heard over the whir of machines squirting caramel-colored elixir into scores of small cans that then whizzed down assembly lines. “If it’s not good quality, the boycott won’t stick.”

Chat Cola worked with chemists in France to produce the flavor, which is almost indistinguishable from Coke’s — just like its packaging. That’s the case for several flavors: Squint at Chat’s lemon-lime soda and you might mistake it for a can of Sprite.

In 2020, the Ramallah-based National Beverage Company sued Chat Cola for copyright infringement in Palestinian court, contending that Chat had imitated Coke’s designs for multiple drinks. The court ultimately sided with Chat Cola, determining there were enough subtle differences in the can designs that it didn’t violate copyright law.

In the Salfit warehouse, drivers loaded “family size” packages of soda into trucks bound not only for the West Bank but also for Tel Aviv, Haifa and other cities in Israel. Staffers said that Chat soda sales in Israel’s predominantly Arab cities jumped 25% last year. To broaden its appeal in Israel, Chat Cola secured kosher certification after a Jewish rabbi’s thorough inspection of the facility.

Still, critics of the Palestinians-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, say that its main objective — to isolate Israel economically for its occupation of Palestinian lands — only exacerbates the conflict.

“BDS and similar actions drive communities apart, they don’t help to bring people together,” said Vlad Khaykin, the executive vice president of social impact and partnerships in North America for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization. “The kind of rhetoric being embraced by the BDS movement to justify the boycott of Israel is really quite dangerous.”

While Chat Cola goes out of its way to avoid buying from Israel — sourcing ingredients and materials from France, Italy and Kuwait — it can’t avoid the circumstances of Israeli occupation, in which Israel dominates the Palestinian economy, controls borders, imports and more.

Deliveries of raw materials to Chat Cola’s West Bank factory get hit with a 35% import tax — half of which Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinians. The general manager, Arar, said his company’s success depends far more on Israeli bureaucratic goodwill than nationalist fervor.

For nearly a month last fall, Israeli authorities detained Chat’s aluminum shipments from Jordan at the Allenby Bridge Crossing, forcing part of the factory to shut down and costing the company tens of thousands of dollars.

Among the local buyers left in the lurch was Croissant House in Ramallah, where, on a recent afternoon, at least one thirsty customer, confronting a nearly empty refrigerator, slipped to the supermarket next-door for a can of Coke.

“It’s very frustrating,” said Asaad, the worker. “We want to be self-sufficient. But we’re not.”

Esta disminución se produce cuando la demanda por estos programas, que incluyen la alfabetización para adultos y clases de inglés, ha aumentado considerablemente en los últimos años.

Este artículo se publicó originalmente en inglés el 25 de febrero. Traducido por Daniel Parra. Read the English version here.

A diciembre, el número de participantes en las clases de alfabetización para adultos financiadas por la ciudad, entre los que se incluyen inmigrantes neoyorquinos que aprenden inglés, se redujo a la mitad (48.3 por ciento) este año fiscal en comparación con el anterior, según ha revelado City Limits.

El descenso se produce en un momento de gran demanda por estos servicios —después de que más de 231.000 inmigrantes y solicitantes de asilo llegaran a la ciudad en los últimos tres años, con decenas de miles aún en el sistema de refugios— y después de que el Departamento de Juventud y Desarrollo Comunitario (DYCD por sus siglas en inglés) aplicara una nueva fórmula para conceder fondos a los proveedores de estos programas.

Entre julio y diciembre de 2024 (que constituyen los primeros seis meses del actual año fiscal de 2025) hubo aproximadamente 5.071 participantes en estos programas, por debajo de los 9.811 durante el mismo período del año anterior, según datos del DYCD.

El DYCD dijo que gran parte de la disminución estaba relacionada con la transición a su nuevo modelo de contratos. City Limits fue el primero en informar en el verano pasado sobre esos cambios, que obligaron a varios proveedores de educación para adultos de larga data a posponer o cancelar temporalmente las clases.

Al comienzo del año fiscal en julio, el DYCD implementó nuevas requests for proposals (convocatorias de propuestas o RFP por sus siglas en inglés) para que los proveedores hicieran ofertas, y seleccionó a los proveedores dentro de comunidades geográficas específicas llamadas Neighborhood Tabulation Areas (áreas de tabulación de barrios o NTA por sus siglas en inglés), que son áreas con altos índices de pobreza y bajo dominio del inglés.

Sin embargo el DYCD dijo que no recibió propuestas para varias NTA, lo que obligó a buscar otros proveedores. Los detractores de los cambios ya habían advertido anteriormente de este resultado. El año pasado, la New York City Coalition for Adult Literacy (Coalición de la Ciudad de Nueva York para la Alfabetización de Adultos) descubrió que muchas NTA seleccionadas no contaban con proveedores financiados por el DYCD, y más del 70 por ciento de los programas existentes no estaban ubicados en una NTA.

Además, dos licitadores se retiraron del proceso, según el DYCD. La agencia ha seleccionado nuevos proveedores para cubrir estos puestos, que cubren programas para 125 personas en Crown Heights y 149 participantes en Bedford-Stuyvesant, en Brooklyn. Al 19 de febrero, los contratos estaban a la espera de la aprobación de la Oficina del Alcalde de Servicios de Contratos.

“El DYCD sigue centrado en proporcionar programas de alfabetización críticos a las comunidades más necesitadas”, dijo Mark Zustovich, portavoz del DYCD. “Además, la financiación discrecional de la ciudad de Nueva York, asignada por el Concejo, apoya a las organizaciones sin ánimo de lucro que abordan las prioridades locales. Estos fondos mejoran los servicios de los organismos municipales y se utilizan para satisfacer directamente las necesidades cambiantes de las comunidades de toda la ciudad”.

Durante el verano, la asignación de contratos tardó más de dos meses en completarse, y varios proveedores de alfabetización de adultos se vieron obligados a cancelar temporalmente las clases, como informó City Limits en agosto.

Ese retraso en las asignaciones, a su vez, retrasó la distribución de $10 millones de dólares en fondos discrecionales del Concejo de la ciudad para programas de educación para adultos, que ofrecen una gama de clases a los neoyorquinos mayores de 16 años, incluyendo alfabetización, inglés para hablantes de otros idiomas (ESOL por sus siglas en inglés) y matemáticas.

En los últimos años, el Concejo de la ciudad ha aumentado la financiación global de los programas de alfabetización para adultos. El año pasado, los legisladores proporcionaron fondos discrecionales para reponer a los proveedores que perdieron la financiación por el nuevo proceso de RFP del DYCD, para que los servicios pudieran llegar a una población similar a la de años anteriores.

Según el DYCD, el objetivo para este año fiscal es atender a 14.312 participantes en sus programas de educación de adultos. Eso es menor que el número de personas que tomaron parte en las clases financiadas por la ciudad durante los dos años anteriores: los proveedores sirvieron a 18.191 personas en el año fiscal 2024 y 16.520 personas en el año fiscal 2023, muestran datos de la ciudad. 

El DYCD dijo que continuará coordinando con los proveedores contratados, que dicen que están progresando hacia sus objetivos de inscripción.

Para ponerse en contacto con el reportero de esta noticia, escriba a Daniel@citylimits.org. Para ponerse en contacto con la editora, escriba a Jeanmarie@citylimits.org.